The Southern Religion That They Call American Football

Soo American Football... where do i start!! I have been to three games now against North Texas, Arkansas and Vanderbilt and they still dont cease to amaze me. Just the cheer excitement that takes place on campus the day of the game is unbelievable. Literally everyone is in Alabama colours from the pet dog to the tiny baby or the open top car or the motor bike passing on the road. All the students also majorly dress up. on an ordinary day every girl on campus wears an XXL tshirt with shorts and trainers but on game day this all changes and they all get their beautiful dresses out and their high heels.  Tailgating is a massive thing here, everyone  starts setting up tents on the quad the friday before the game and by the morning of game day everyone is out in force on the quad with their drinks, bbq food and mahoosive tvs to watch the lead up to the game and in the background you can hear the Million Dollar Band warming up, its pretty cool! There is also food stalls and fun fair rides for the kids. Its ridiculous, i cant quite compare it to anything we have in England. 

I find the actual game mega boring (but dont tell anyone i said that here because i will probably get shot!) I dont know if you are familiar with America Football but the game is made up of four quarters so technically it should be an hour with a half time but usually about four hours later we are still stood watching. Literally every two minutes they stop the clock for about ten minutes and the whole time is spent stood up!! The bit that i enjoy is the bits at the beginning and the middle when the million dollar band, cheerleaders and Crimsonettes do there thing. One thing that was an amazing site was the whole stadium.. every one hundred and eight thousand seats.. doing the wave around the stadium! One thing i forgot to mention is the seating for the students is all down one end but it is split into the greek section (sororities and fraternities) and the ordinary student section. This has been a subject of contention on campus since I have been here because it is a recently new thing. I dont think i agree with it because instead of segregating people on their race it is pretty much segregating people on their wealth and class. I dont know why they felt the need to split everyone up! There is an in joke within the Greeks that the normal students are called the GDI's standing for God Damn Independence because of all the fuss they are kicking up which is quite funny. We are yet to loose a game so everyone is hoping that Alabama gets to the national championships in New Orleans this year. Roll Tide!

Civil War Memorial

I have been told that the reason why everyone in the south is so fanatical about their football is because it is the south fighting back after the civil war, showing the north that they did not loose the civil war completely. The national championships usually end up being between a northern and a southern team and therefore the south see it as a way of winning against the north. Crazy.

Road Trip To Nashville and Memphis

2/9/2011 - 5/9/2011

Last weekend five of us went on a road trip to Nashville and Memphis, it was Labour Day on monday so we took the opportunity to get away for a few days! We ended up driving a massive minivan which had electric doors and an electric boot and all you had to do to drive it was move the stick from 'park' to 'drive', literally the laziest car i have ever been in! I got mega bored driving because all the roads were just straight wide roads which went on for hundreds of miles and all i had to do was keep my foot on the pedal and wiggle my foot around every so often to stop it seizing up from cramp! 

Nashville was amazing, such a cool atmosphere at night. Every bar on the main street had country bands playing and everyone was out to have a good time. The girls all wore cowboy boots with dresses and the guys all had their cowboy hats on. 

On the Sunday we got up early and drove to Memphis which was about a three hour drive. A storm had hit the south that day so we were driving in the pooring rain which wasnt so fun. We headed for Graceland, Elvis' home and paid $10 to park our car in the car park. After stepping into the lobby area we all realized it was about $35 to actually get in to the place so we decided that was a no no, a bit to expensive for a group of girls who are not huge fans of Elvis like some of the people were there. Nearly everyone had Elvis tshirts on! I did make sure i got an Elvis Graceland key ring before getting back in the car though, just to say i had at least seen the place! 

Graceland being to expensive was a bit of a blessing in disguise really because it gave us enough time to head to the national civil rights museum in Memphis. The museum is inside the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was such an amazing experience and we spent the whole afternoon there looking around. Quite a lot of the written information i had previously learned over the last few years but some of the original photographs and news tapes were really interesting. They  had also opened up the room where martin luther king stayed the day he was shot and on the balcony of the motel is a wreath in memory of him at the point on the balcony where he was shot. These sorts of places are pretty much the reason why i came to the south! 

On our way back on monday we drove to Jackson Mississippi to stop for some lunch before heading back to Tuscalloosa. We stopped at a diner to get some lunch (there is another rant about the food coming) I thought i would be healthy and get a salad and i specifically asked for the dressing on the side but no this didnt happen. Most of the other girls had burgers and sandwiches and when i got my salad i felt like they had the healthier option. My salad was drenched in about a liter of think yellow salad dressing, i could barely see the green of the salad leaves!! Seriouslyyyyy you literally cant buy anything healthy here if you eat out. I ended up sending it back because it made me feel sick just looking at it haha. 

But all in all it was an amazing memorable first road trip!

Nashville 2/9/2011 - 3/9/2011

Me driving the beast of a minivan!

We stopped on the way to Nashville for a Wendy's along with all the freaky
red neck truckers.

$10 a night each!

The car on the far left was our car! The motel looked like one of those freaky on the roadside
motels from the movies! Well i guess it kinda was a freaky on the roadside motel.

The Girls! From the left me, Amy, Jenna, Martina and Angela

Down Town Nashville

Memphis 4/9/2011

Beale Street and the Civil Rights Museum

I Have A Dream

"Spirit"

Peabody Hotel Ducks

11 am Every Day

Every day at 11 a.m. the Peabody Ducks at the Peabody Hotel Memphis come down
in the lift from there home on the top floor of the hotel and run down a red carpet up some
steps and into the fountain in the center of the hotel. They stay there until 5 p.m. when they
do the same thing in reverse. Crowds gather to witness it everyday! 

This is the Peabody Duck Man, i was told it is an extremely sought after job!
He was way to pleased with himself if you ask me.

My Home For The Year!

The second building along the road is my block. Right behind us is the rec centre and
right in front of us is the back of fraternity row.

The Quad, right in the middle of campus with Denny Chimes ringing
out every fifteen minutes. 

This is facing away from the stadium onto University Boulevard and a few frat houses. 

The library!

This is the oldest building on campus.

This is fraternity row, right infront of where we live at Bryce Lawn. Note all the massive gas
guzzing trucks packed outside! Every single student has one. 

These are just a few images from around campus!

Tornado Destruction

Greek Life

Sororities And Fraternities Rule This Campus

From the massive southern houses to the ridiculous parties and the atmosphere of superiority that oozes from the people that take part. The University of Alabama has the biggest sorority and fraternity culture in the whole of the US. Its incredible and pretty unbelievable that anything like this could ever happen at a university in this day and age but it has been happening in American universities for generations and they pride themselves on this. We have nothing to compare it to in england, i think that is maybe why in the first week of arriving all of the international students were just in ore of the whole situation. The Greek life is all about money and family history/legacy. The week we arrived it was rush week for the sororities so every day hundreds of girls were out on campus doing various tasks and being judged and evaluated for god knows what to see if they had the right looks and attributions that each sorority was looking for. From our point of view looking in, it seemed like the most ridiculous tradition that could ever take place in this day and age. So demoralizing and degrading for the girls involved. Last week 1,200 girls took part in Rush Week ad only 500 got a place in a sorority and for those 700 girls it was literally the end of their lives. The University of Alabama police were even on suicide watch for the weekend because the girls took rejection THAT seriously. Its hard to imagine that these girls could get that involved in such a process but watching it all take place it was obvious that these young girls get sucked in and spat out again by those that feel it necessary to judge a girl on their looks, the way they dress, the amount of money their family has and how much of that can be donated to their sorority. We even found a manual in a toilet which had been left by a distraught girl who had been rejected. This manual had everything in it, from what to wear to what to eat and how to conduct yourself throughout the week to make a good impression. The boys fraternity life is a whole other subject which i will have to go into in another post!

These images are from Bid Day, the final day of Rush Week. Each house congregates outside 
their house while the new members are waiting to find out if they have got in or not. 

Hundreds of the girls family and friends wait to find out who has got in.

The girls who are finding out if they have got into the sorority that they want have to 
go into the stadium to collect their envelope which contains the verdict. Then they run 
screaming and crying down this street manned by police to their given sororities. 

This is one of the sororities new members running down the street in front of the crowd.

The girls, some crying because they didn't get in and some extremely happy exit the stadium 
as they hold their envelopes. 

An experience that photographs can not quite give justice, as you can probably imagine!!

Images of the Bryant Denny Stadium

This is the inside of the Bryant Denny Stadium home of Alabama Crimson Tide. It has a maximum capacity of 101,821 people! Pretty amazing!

This is Big Al, the Alabama mascot which is standing on the green outside the stadium

Outside the stadium is the 'Walk of Champions' along with statues of all the coaches that led the team to the National Championships. 

The Fascinating Life of a University of Alabama Student

'Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, Give 'Em Hell Alabama'

Students come to UA for Football, not the British kind, but the massive men built like a brick wall wearing a lot of armour and kicking about an egg shaped ball kind. The impression I get is the University is funded by wealthy donations towards the football team and this creats an overwhelming support for the game through the university. The main pre game areas where food and drink is put on costs more than $200,000 to be part of. I have said 'Roll Tide' in one week more times than i can count on one hand! Everyone wears school colors around campus and Alabama merchandise creating a culture that runs throughout the whole town of Tuscaloosa. I have to say, I have already bought into this culture by purchasing my first University of Alabama T-shirt and Crimson Tide shorts. It was hard to chose between the UA printed handbags and purses to the Big Al writting paper or the UA phone covers. I was fascinated by the amount of support given by the community to the college team. A trip to Wall-Mart was eye opening in more ways than one. The main thing I noticed after taking in the sheer size of the place was the amount of UA football merchandise on sale for the public to buy. Car stickers galore all over their gas guzzling trucks and window stickers and flags all over their hundreds of fast food outlets along the highway and the season hasn't even begun yet! I have been told Game days are like nothing I will have ever seen before, even Tail Gating is a massive spectacle with members of the town flocking to the Quad on campus and setting up their own areas to watch the game on their big screen tvs next to their massive SUVs and their pets come along for the ride too! I cant wait to see all that for myself when the season kicks off in a few weeks. It is interesting to look in from an outsiders point of view, wondering how one school can be so overwhelmed with pride for their football team but you cant really help but get sucked along for the ride.             ROLL TIDE.

"Yea, Alabama!"

Yea, Alabama! Drown 'em Tide!
Every 'Bama man's behind you;
Hit your stride!
Go teach the Bulldogs to behave,
Send the Yellow Jackets to a watery grave!
And if a man starts to weaken,
That's a shame!
For 'Bama's pluck and grit
Have writ her name in crimson flame!
Fight on, fight on, fight on, men!
Remember the Rose Bowl we'll win then!
Go, roll to victory,
Hit your stride,
You're Dixie's football pride, Crimson Tide!

ROLL TIDE.